What’s new and what’s next for Power BI Embedded (July 2016)

It has been a few months now since Power BI Embedded was introduced and released into public preview. Today, we are happy to announce the general availability of the Power BI Embedded services in 9 different regions around the globe.

Power BI Embedded is an Azure services designed with developers in mind. We wanted to take the core building blocks of Power BI, like reports and datasets, and allow developers to easily fit them within their applications without any major re-architecture. Power BI Embedded also supports app tokens so developers can continue to use their existing mechanisms to authenticate and authorize users. It also integrated with the Azure platform to allow for easy automation and provisioning of Power BI Embedded.

With the general availability of Power BI Embedded, we are pleased to be extending the functionality and capabilities that we give to developers. Below are some of the notable changes in this month’s release of Power BI Embedded.

Simplified app token process

We have simplified the way developers authenticate their calls to Power BI. From today on, app tokens will only be used to authenticate embedding requests and other client side requests that may be added in the future. All calls to our REST APIs will be authenticated using our API keys directly. This eliminates the need to generate app tokens each time you want to call the REST API. For more information, please see “Authenticating and authorizing with Power BI Embedded”.

Row level security

Perhaps the single biggest question that we have heard from customers has been: “how do I secure my data in a multi-tenant application?” Power BI Embedded now supports row level security (RLS). RLS allows you to create one set of reports and datasets and to use them with multiple users and customers. Each customer can view the same reports but only see the data they are allowed to see. RLS allows you to develop something once and deliver it to all your customers while giving them a tailored view of the data all the way down to a single row. To learn how to configure RLS please see “RLS and Power BI Embedded”.

Simpler billing model

We also received a lot of feedback on our preview billing model. Based on that feedback, we have decided to simplify that model. Starting September 1st, developers will no longer be billed per visual render but instead per report sessions. A report session is registered each time a user loads a report within the iframe, and it is good for 60 minutes. This means that no matter how many pages or visuals a report has or how many times a user clicks around that report, you will only be billed for one report session unless the entire report is reloaded. For details on the new billing model, please see our pricing page.

For a full list of features, please check out the “What’s New” article.

What’s next

A major advantage of Power BI Embedded is that it is a cloud service which means that we can constantly roll out improvements and new features. Below, is just a small sample of some of the features that you will see starting to roll out this summer and fall.

Interactivity between your application and Power BI reports

As of today, Power BI reports are hosted within your application in an iframe and there is limited interactivity between your app and the report. To change this, we will be launching a new client side API that will let you send information into the iframe as well as get information out. This includes interactively changing pages and setting simple to complex filters so that you can create your own filter controls. The client side API will also allow your app to subscribe and listen to events. These events include things like a page change or a user selecting a specific data point on a visual. The event will include enough information for your application to know what was clicked so that it can take some action. This new client side API will open up all kinds of new scenarios for Power BI Embedded.

Connectivity

We are also working on expanding the sources of data the Power BI Embedded can connect to. This includes additional DirectQuery sources, access to on premise data sources, support for refreshing cached models and the ability to push data directly via an API. These improved connectivity options will help unlock all different types of data and allow that data to be visualized within your application for your users.